This Man Sold His Business For $2 Billion, And Then Decided To Become An Uber Driver

There are those people who join Uber as a driver to bring in extra cash to support their family, and then there are people like Kayak co-founder Paul English, who drive for Uber simply because they love meeting people.

The ex-CEO sold his business for nearly $2 billion back in 2012 to Priceline. After a brief celebration, English looked at his calendar, which was filled with meetings, and realized most of the people he was meeting were either involved in tech or non-profits.

He wanted to change this, so he started driving for Uber, and he picked an odd time to start. It was around Halloween 2015. He had just hosted a costume party and was dressed like a vampire, “People thought it was kind of hilarious that someone dressed up like a vampire was driving a Tesla,” he told Inc.

English worked for two hours that night and continues to drive people around for at least a few hours every week in his hometown of Boston. And when people get inside his vehicle, he doesn’t waste his time talking about himself.

He wants to learn about you…

“If anyone asks what I do for a living, I usually say I’m an engineer, and then I ask what they do. It’s more interesting to hear about other people.”

English keeps a notebook inside his car and writes down a sentence about every rider he picks up. One of his most interesting riders was a 13-year-old girl from China. She was visiting high schools in Boston, in hopes of making it easier to get into Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This made English laugh because he’s a part-time instructor at the school.

And when he told her about his connections, she didn’t believe him, “‘Why are you driving a car if you teach at MIT?’ I told her I have many lives.”

Currently, English has an impressive 4.97 rating on the app, but that’s not good enough for him. He’s still wondering which person failed to give him that 5-star rating. “What did I do wrong?” He still wonders.